


unsaid

by mairesmagicshop



Series: a thousand forgotten things - a pre-story Arcana collection [3]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, F/M, Feelings, Fluff, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 01:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15256122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mairesmagicshop/pseuds/mairesmagicshop
Summary: Vesuvia is gripped by plague. The time for Julian to say everything that lies between them is now. (Spoilers for Book XIII)





	unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> This follows "beginnings" and "a surgeon's hands." I'll chapter them soon!

Julian waits for her at dawn as he’s done every day these last few weeks, the sky just beginning to blossom into color. He smiles wistfully into his tin cup of coffee, black as pitch and about as thick, it seems. How did he get here, casually leaning against her doorframe, waiting for the woman who had become his partner in nearly every aspect… except the one he craved most? He sighs and takes a sip. 

This was different than anything he’d ever felt. It was madness.

It was easier, before. He’d been young, more than a bit wild, and took his pleasures however they came. There was no shortage of people open to exploiting his fancies, only too happy to catch him as he pitched himself into their arms time and time again. But while any manner of gratification was open, negotiable, Julian had learned to guard his heart. Too many times the thrill of surrender was simply a one-night affair. They’d wanted to control him, to punish him, to inflict upon him the sweet pain his body craved, but they never stayed. Wanting him was a step too far. Was it selfish to hope for both?

And now. Now. He shakes his head, grinning more widely. The walls within him shudder each time he looks at her, foundations cracking when they embrace in greeting and when their little fingers brush ever so slightly as they walk. Neither of them pulls away, but neither do they join hands, the tantalizing friction and questions left to linger between them. When she looks at him, he doesn’t see predation or the desire to subjugate. Up through her lashes, there is flirtation and daring, perhaps even desire – if he’s not imagining things – but also care, delight, contentment. Her face hides nothing from him, and for this he’s grateful. Could he gather the courage to finally reveal his feelings without that validation?

Then again, perhaps he’s already given himself away. She didn’t press him when he announced he’d be working alongside her in the clinic (despite the increased, frantic demands from the palace, from Count Lucio himself – he cringes reflexively upon the thought of him); never questioned when he asked her to accompany him on a house call or errand. He’d always made clear that these visits would be purely of her own accord, but she always obliged him, until they were spending most of their waking hours together, only too happy to be in each other’s company.

He’d walk across town and meet her at dawn every morning, coffee made for two (hers sweetened with milk and some brown sugar, just as she liked it), and they’d walk to the clinic. Work all day. Make a house call or two in the evening or conduct an autopsy (even that being tolerable with her along). Eat dinner together. Walk down by the water; maybe have a nightcap at some local dive. Reluctantly part, her fingers firm and insistent as they’d press against his back, their faces ghosting against one another, only his sense of propriety as her “master” – how he despised thinking of himself in that fashion! – keeping her mouth from his. He wants so much more; he wants everything, and each night as she draws her face ever closer to his, he’s fairly sure she does, too.

She is not like the others, of this much he’s convinced. And he is not like remotely like himself; certainly not the young, reckless man he’s been in years past.

Oh, but he does burn for her, fumbling with himself in the dead of night, overheated and desperate for release. His fantasies are familiar, but the sense of safety and devotion and respect he feels within them with her is not. Too often, his penchant for pain had degenerated from pleasure into humiliation and abuse at the ends of inexperienced or cruel lovers. For a time, Julian tolerated them as the price of at least a small piece of satisfaction, and at the time, that was better than nothing. But the plague has changed him; she has changed him. Life seems too fleeting and precious to fritter away his time with people who don’t remember his name in the morning, if they’re there at all. He is not so foolish or far gone to deceive himself into thinking any of them truly care. No, she’s not like the others at all. And so, he hopes.

He’s so preoccupied he doesn’t hear her the first time, his gray eyes fixed on the growing light at the horizon. But he feels her hand at his hip, drawing him in.

“I said good morning, Julian.” 

He is startled, coffee leaping from his cup toward his face. He bites his lip with a hiss, moves his clenched hand up to wipe his scalded skin. But she moves like lightning; immediately produces a lace-edged handkerchief. “Ooooh, dear. Let me,” she says. One slim hand cups his jaw, the other blotting the tender skin above his upper lip. “I’m so sorry.” He feels altogether too tall, too rigid, and yet like soft clay in her hands, turning his face slightly toward her touch. 

“I’ve had worse, my dear,” he chuckles in response, his lips murmuring into the corner of her cool palm. Her gaze is soft somehow upon him, and he feels vulnerable, exposed, excited by her touch. He raises his other hand, wordlessly, to offer the steaming cup he holds for her there. She laughs, accepts it gratefully, a slight shrug in her shoulders. She’s told him before he needn’t bring her coffee each morning, let alone trek across town to meet her, but she rewards him each time with a tight hug and her unfailing smiles; with some story she says she couldn’t wait to tell him (though they’d parted not six hours before). “Shall we?” she asks, tucking a tendril of his hair behind his hair. 

So, they set off as they have every morning these last few weeks, keeping a leisurely pace. They talk at length about the day to come, but they tell stories, and jokes, too; laughing even as the city is going to pieces around them. But they cannot be so deadly serious all the time, she’s said before. If they are to cure the plague, they must take care of themselves, too. It feels terribly self-indulgent sometimes, but he knows they are no good to anyone without the will to keep on. She’s become such a crucial part of that for him – could she even know how much? And he –

His stream of thoughts is utterly silenced as he feels her fingers lace through his. It’s all he can do to continue walking, as if nothing has changed. But in a single touch, his entire world has changed. His heart is racing, the heat seeping up his arm and igniting in his chest. The inventory he’s kept of each casual but intentional brush of a hand; every arm around a shoulder or waist; all the flirtations and there so many of those… it all comes crashing through his memories into his conscious mind and he nearly stumbles on a small stone, not able to mind his feet. So much there, right there, in front of him! All of it, all of it, entirely unsaid, the feeling of it sour in his mouth.

He feels the unrelenting press of time bearing down on them, perhaps more acutely than ever, as they stroll hand in hand toward the clinic. He looks down at her, the morning sunlight shimmering in her hair, her face animated and alive and looking back at him as though he’s the only thing she can see, the only person in the world. And if he knows anything at all for certain, it’s that he has no more time left to waste. 

He’ll tell her. He’ll tell her today, later - make some kind of plan, make it special… He is in emotional disarray, a fever rising within him as she unlocks the door and sets to the various and sundry chores awaiting them.

He’ll tell her the words he’s been hiding in the ever-narrowing space between them, the ones he’s threatened to betray so many times before: I love you, with the hard knowledge that whatever time they’re fated to have together will have to be good enough.

But he knows better. No amount of time ever could.


End file.
